Page 85 of Three to Fall

I had no idea how I was supposed to talk to a man as psychotic as Torch. He had crazy eyes, and the constant flicking of that lighter was disturbing.

He gave a little sigh of disappointment but took the van keys and leaned back against it with his arms folded while he listened to the rest of us work through the details.

Hawk pointed at each of us as he talked. “Whip, Ice, Kyle, Ace, and Trigger go in from the far side of the property. X, Scythe, Chaos, Grayson, Kara, and me from this side. We’re all heading for Kara’s parents’ house where we believe Jacqueline will be sleeping, but as two teams in case one is intercepted.”

I looked at Kyle. “If your team gets there first, you need to be the one to go in and get her. She knows you, at least a little bit. She’ll be terrified if a group of strange men try stealing her out of her bed. I don’t want her traumatized any more than she already is.” I eyed my guys. “If we get there first, none of you will hold me back from going in that house. No matter what happens. You hear me?”

To my surprise, all three nodded.

A rush of adrenaline filled me.

The last time I’d been here I was terrified for my life. Now I was more scared of losing the people I loved.

Hawk rubbed a hand across the back of his neck, his T-shirt riding up just enough to flash a strip of tattoo-covered skin just above the waistband of his jeans. “If we all have some vague ideaof what we’re doing, let’s go. Keep communications to the bare minimum. Sound is going to travel out here.”

Like groups of soldiers, we fell into two lines, figures dark in the deep shadows of the night. I was right in the middle of my group, with X, Scythe, and Grayson behind me, Hayden and Hawk in front of me. I stuck close to Hayden’s back and whispered corrections if Hawk started steering us off track. We stuck to the shadows of the neighboring property, the fences of Ethereal Eden gleaming silver in the moonlight and making the place seem more like a prison than a sanctuary.

At the fence line, Hawk kneeled and pulled bolt cutters from his backpack, cutting through the wire to make an opening big enough for all of us to get through.

With every step, my heart beat faster. I was sure, at any moment, we’d trip some sort of alarm. That the floodlights would all turn on, or that the blaring of the siren they’d triggered the night we’d left would give us away again.

But we made it through the outer pastures where the cows lifted their heads at our approach but let us pass without more than a sleepy moo. I’d given us the more direct route to the house, coming in from the nearest side of the commune, rather than the other side that would take Kyle and his team past the house I’d lived in with Josiah.

I’d planned to come back here and collect evidence that could implicate Josiah in Alice’s murder, but now all I could concentrate on was getting my sister, my unborn baby, and the men I loved out of here.

We’d have to find some other way to see Josiah put in jail for the rest of his life. Jacqueline had to come first.

My heart clenched at the sight of the little cabin I’d lived in with Hayley Jade when she was a baby. The one Shari, the woman who’d raised Hayley Jade after she’d been taken fromme, now lived in. I moved toward it instinctively, but Grayson grabbed my arm.

“Where are you going? Isn’t that your parents’ house just up there?”

I nodded. “But there’s another woman who needs our help in this cabin.”

Hayden and Hawk both stopped and glanced back at us, hearing every word of the whispered conversation because the night was so quiet.

Hawk shook his head. “We don’t have that sort of time to waste. The longer we’re here, the more chance there is of being caught. I don’t like how many vehicles there are over there.”

I followed his line of sight, my gaze bouncing across the trucks parked outside every house, and a lot more parked in a makeshift parking lot beside a big barn.

Hawk eyed them all warily. “That’s a lot more than you told us about. Unless Josiah has been buying cars for all the women and kids who live here…”

I shook my head. “Most of us don’t even know how to drive. Even those who came from the outside are never permitted behind the wheel. If the women go to town to sell at the market, they’re always driven in by one of the men.”

Hayden swore softly. “So we need to assume there’s more men here than there were. Probably not surprising, after his podcast went viral. It could have brought him a lot of new followers.”

Hawk turned to me. “Just Jacqueline right now, okay? She’s the target. If we can collect anyone else on the way out then great, but she has to be the priority. Shari is an adult, and she came here of her own free will.”

“Not for this life,” I whispered. “She didn’t come here for this. No one did. He forces her to offer herself to men for sex, Hawk. She’s the woman who raised Hayley Jade. We can’t just leave herhere. Eventually, one of those men will kill her, and I can’t live with that. Can you? She’s important to our daughter, so she has to be important to us too.”

I prayed no one would balk at me calling Hayley Jade ours.

Because I meant it. Grayson might have had more of a friendship with her, and I knew he cared about her deeply. But Hawk and Hayden were the fathers she’d never had.

Queenie was the grandmother I’d always wanted for her. Aloha and Ice the uncles.

She was all of ours.

Scythe turned to Hawk. “We split up. X and I will go get the woman. You all go get the girl. We meet back here. We came in together. We leave together. Capiche?”

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